Technical Analysis:

Technical analysis refers to utilizing a system, whether manual or automated, that looks at price movements among currencies. The systems will use technical indicators, working to provide the trader with advice on when to buy and sell pairs of currencies on the Forex market. Some traders prefer to select and monitor their own technical indicators while others prefer to rely on automated currency trading software systems.

There are a variety of benefits to utilizing technical analysis to trade Forex, including:

· Trends are easily found. When reviewing for price changes, technical analysis methods reveal the important trends necessary to make well informed trades.

· Charting is easy and inexpensive to create and utilize. Whether you are manually tracking price movements through your own spreadsheets or are using a software program, technical analysis is simple to understand.

· Patterns in price are easily noticed, easy to follow and strong predictors of future currency behavior.

Both technical and fundamental analysis provides a wealth of information in which to trade currencies on Forex. While many traders will utilize both strategies, most experts will recommend learning and mastering one versus trying to learn and implement both simultaneously.

What is Technical Analysis?

“Technical analysis” is an industry term that more often than not sounds much more complicated than the actual process is. Really, it ought to be referred to as “price analysis”, as this would be a more accurate description. Through the use of charted data traders around the world analyze their market of choice. The objective: determine future price movement. The means: understanding price movement patterns of the past.

* The charting of price movements creates a visual tug-of-war between buyers and sellers. The large majority of Technical traders in the Forex market focus their attention on candlestick data, a method of charting that offers a visual interpretation of the high, low, open and close of a currency price within a certain time frame.

Combined with various forms of pattern recognition (which will be covered later in the course) candlestick charting offers traders a visual look at the market’s past prices and trends. Analyzing this historical data in order to predict the movements of future prices is the process known as “technical analysis”. Notice how price patterns formed on the following chart tend to repeat; technical traders attempt to identify patterns of this nature, and base their trades accordingly.

Why Does Technical Analysis Work?

Technical analysis is often dispelled as a myth, even a fool’s errand. There are those who believe that price movement is completely random and completely unpredictable. True, technical analysis is never an exact science (predicting the future never is). However, the true fool would be he or she that ignores the power of technical analysis, particularly in the Forex market.

Analyzing price patterns is actually very similar to analyzing human behavior. While humans can at times be unpredictable in nature, humans are typically considered to be creatures of habit. The average human adheres to certain paradigms, paradigms that are rarely broken. Do you brush your teeth or shower first? Do you comb your hair before or after you shave? The point: if one were to observe an average person’s daily routine before leaving the house for work their behavior may seem random or without purpose. However, if one were to observe the same human day after day, within a relatively short amount of time it would not be hard to outline that person’s morning routine. In fact, nine times out of ten you would probably be able to predict with impressive accuracy how your observed creature would prepare for their day, perhaps even down to the minute.

* The Forex market is also a creature of habit. Analyzing price movement is effective because the past can teach us how human beings (the real living and breathing organism of this market) will react to certain situations. History does repeat itself. Technical analysis offers the Forex trader a certain level of expectancy when considering future price movements. In a sense, accurate technical analysis is a trader’s true edge. There is no crystal ball for predicting the future of the market, though there are keys to understanding patterns, past, present and future.

When Does Technical Analysis Fail?

Technical analysis fails when traders fail to consider the fundamentals. Why mention fundamental analysis when explaining technical analysis? Simple, the one just doesn’t work without the other. Fundamental factors such as political events, a hike in interest rates, unemployment rates and so on will impact the Forex market more substantially than perhaps any other market. Fundamental factors are often the driving force of major price movements. A trader focused on technical analysis

Cannot ignore Nonfarm Payroll on the first Friday of the month and expect his or her technical indications to be as accurate as the day prior. Notice the price movement shown in the following image; shortly after Nonfarm Payroll price reactions were wild; during such times technical analysis cannot be counted on.

Introduction to Technical Analysis for Forex Trader

Any forex trader must apply a certain method in order to predict the future price of a certain currency, that's a given fact. The entire concept of speculative forex trading is based upon future fluctuations in currency prices. You make profit by buying a certain currency in one price and selling by another. Therefore, the most important thing for any trader, novice or expert, is to have some sort of prediction to future price changes. Thus came to life several different methods of market analysis, each tries to incorporate different methods and data in order to give some sort of prediction to the future price of various currencies. The first method we will review in this series of articles is Technical Analysis. Technical analysis is based on the concept that it is possible to predict future prices using only market generated data. All the data and history regarding a price is represented in various charts and imply assorted methodologies. Every trader, no matter what trading style he uses, uses this method at some point. At the very least, these charts help to determine what the ideal buy or sell position is, at any given time. It helps to give a broader look on he trends and patterns in the market. Many critics accuse the Technicians of ignoring the fundamental of the market, but they claim in return that all of the market's fundamentals are already represented in the charts. In their opinion any fundamental market rule is already enveloped in the current price and more importantly in the price's history.